Qualitative Effects of Media on Advertising Effectiveness

By Bobby J. Calder and Edward C. Malthouse

Magazines

"The way a person experiences a magazine or newspaper can affect the way they react to advertising in the publication."

Source: Paper presented at ESOMAR/ARF Worldwide Audience Measurement (WAM), Geneva, Switzerland, June 13–18, 2004.

Type of Promotional Materials/Activity: Magazines, newspapers

Sample Population:  4,347 magazine readers and 4,444 newspaper readers weighted to U.S. Census using age, race, and gender.

Methodology: Predictive modeling analysis of multi-scaled mailed survey.
 

Metrics: Qualitative experiences reading a magazine/newspaper and attitudes towards an ad that is relatively “generic” and is not reflective of that magazine's or newspaper’s content.
 

Dependent variable: 

• Attitudes towards ad for a fictitious brand of bottled water.

Independent variables:

• 44 newspaper and 39 magazine experience factors (thoughts and feelings)
  
• Bottled water consumption
  
• General interest in advertising appearing in magazine/newspaper.

Top Line Results:
 

• Readers who expressed positive experiences with a magazine or newspaper also held favorable views towards the advertising in the publication; Positive experiences like “it makes me smarter” and “it keeps me up to date on things I try to keep up with” resulted in more favorable attitudes towards the bottled water advertisement.
  
  
• The results indicate a meaningful association between magazine and newspaper reading experiences and attitudes towards the advertisements featured within.

Take-Away: To quote the authors:  “This research demonstrates that the way a person experiences a magazine or newspaper can affect the way the person reacts to advertising in the publication. For example, people who find the stories in a magazine more absorbing also have more positive reactions to the advertising in the magazine. Therefore, other things being equal, an advertisement in a magazine that absorbs its readers is worth more to the advertiser than the same ad in a magazine that does not absorb its readers as much.”
 

Complexity rating of the original source:  2
(Complex statistical analysis scale:  1= none, 2= moderate, 3 = difficult)